Jake Hunter: Smoking Commercial! The game itself was pitiful to begin with and then there's all the Marlboro refe
The game play in Jake Hunter is sub par for the genre, even though there aren't too many games in this genre. The graphics can pretty much be explained just by looking at the box. The cases are decent, but each of them ends with extremely anticlimactic letdowns.
Right about now, I'd mention the resemblance between this game and a couple of series that came before it, but I'm not going to. That would be an insult to said better series. I like the mystery genre, and its games like this one that make the future for games like this one a whole lot bleaker. If this is a trend, I'll stick to other genres of games, and read and write mystery books, like I have all along.
If you, like myself, were foolish enough to actually purchase a new copy of this game, at full price, then you probably had it coming. Karma. Something like that.
From the get go, every time you turn around, the main character lights up another cigarette, and he frequently flatters the company by discussing how it tastes or smells or what have you, which is all a load of bull - we've all had smoke blown in our faces before. Being asthmatic, I found this aspect of the game to be hard to swallow (pun intended).
There are plenty of awkward moments in this game, and plenty of unimportant and uninteresting dialogs. If you thought you'd be picking up a magnifying glass and doing some original and fulfilling detecting, then this chronicle is going to make you want to cry, because you'll only find the opposite of what you really want.
Collect items. Show them to people. Talk about the case or mundane and seemingly unrelated (but sometimes required) topics. These are elements you can find in many games, and that are done much, much better by another series where you basically solve mysteries, but those games are actually good.
The sound... how to begin? There's almost nothing, sound-effect wise, and just repetitive, cliché, mind-numbing "musak" to slowly rot your eardrums in much the same way that the game's obvious real main character (the cigarette) rots away your tobacco beetle filled lungs.
In this game, you press the L button (left shoulder button) to get 'hints' and 'insight' into the plot and events. But Jake taking a smoke break brings this to you. There's even a lighter in the constantly present logo for that feature, on the upper left hand side of the touch screen.
Jake tosses around the smokeables brand like it's the word "case"! Get it? Cause he's a detective? Funny? No? Fine, I don't need your pity. Anyone who can play this game from start to finish and then deny that there direct tobacco promotion comments placed in plain sight, let alone at the prompting of the user, needs to find a surgeon, because something's wrong in there, somewhere.
Even if you can toss all that aside, despite the fact that a kid might get a hold of this game and be unhealthily influenced by it, there's still no reason you should buy it. Even if you already own and have beaten every other mystery game that's available to you, there's still better ways to spend that money. Go buy some mystery novels, instead. You can buy a lot of used paperbacks for this game's standard sticker.
Uninspired. Overrated. Failure. These are all words that can't even begin to describe Jake Hunter: Detective Chronicles. I've honestly not been more let down by a handheld game in my life, and I have purchased a lot of bad games. So, take my word for it, or find out for yourself and pay the consequences. The choice, as always, is entirely up to you.
Two thumbs (and more, if I can find some) all the way down, forever.